scythian12

I was rather referring to the homeless Pepe the frog on the bench, to which I struggle to find a connection with football in general, let alone FM...

You also have to keep in mind this ad is meant for a Japanese public, I mean they are into all manners of things which raises an eyebrow in the West.

Have you modified the club kits in IGE? The game gives you 0 notification, but this unticks the "allow licenced kits" option in the club IGE menu. If you set it again, the kits will appear. @Zachary Whyte maybe put in a notification when the kit menu is first touched in IGE by the user that this will deactivate licenced kits?

It could be included, but there also needs to be logic implemented it being booed like England playing away in Hungary. 😉

It is a very complicated bit of the game, with many feedback loops, so you can easily end up with horrific butterfly wing flapping-related accidents. One thing that jumps out at me is that the players will only look at the club's squads that are interested in signing them and more often than not choose the stronger squad, even if their role is somewhat minor to what it would be at other interested parties. I do not believe (but then again, I could be very wrong, see first sentence) that a small tweak in how players prioritize playing time over quality teammates would ruin the entire system, but lead to bit more varied squads. It is also evident that with the current system, England starts attracting the very best players very easily. On the 'tip' end of the scale, this also leads to a phenomenon which I feel this is also a bit of a limp as England might have the most competitive league, but in the highest echelons of quality, it never is / was as prolific in attracting the best players like the Spanish or earlier the Italian top clubs were. Just throw a glance at the Ballon d'Or wiki page for the top 3 nominees in the last 40 years. On the player development front, maybe playing 38 league games against very tough physical opponents is simply not the best approach to reach those elusive 170+ CA levels. But of course, the majority of the buying public is English so it will always skew towards their desires, and has been a long-standing issue with the gameworld as whole. Move out of London, SI! But playing with an approach where I switch clubs every 5 years in the same nation I see that the AI will sell the very best players I attracted to my previous clubs (or even let them go... ), but it will cultivate a squad that has 16 players in a CA range within 10 points of the 3rd-4th best players when I left the club, very occasionally punching higher, and this now over more than a 20-year span. They even have 1-2 club grown players who are in this first squad range, ones they signed as talents with 18 and developed them, so I see less of an issue with the development side of things.

One thing that is also very prominent in FM24 squad building is CA homogeniety. Teams will recruit to the extent of their Rep and financial possibilities, but not only in the "tip" but also the breadth of the squad. This effect is helped by AI player decision-making prioritising being a less important part of a stronger squad than being a more prominent member of a "smaller" team. One ends up with AI squads which have 16-20 players in the same CA range within 10 points or so. DB (and arguably, real life) squads are more varied, with a CA range of about 20-30 for first team squad. On one hand, the current approach ensures a competent keeping of standards by the AI, but also leads to a bit of a stale gameworld - there will be little movement on the whole for statures of different clubs and divisions. I would argue it also exacerbates the suffocating grip of the PL on all things Rep and player quality. PL teams can easily attract the very best players in the World (think 140-50-60 CA for impact subs and fringe players), making any PL team the pantomime baddie in European competitions. 5/8 PL teams in the top 8 of the CL, them also easily making the quarter final of the CL yesr after year, England getting close to 30 points in the 5-year-ranking, a 40-point lead overall, I hate it. 🤮

This is a good video essay on why video game economies are never like the real world, and why they are intrisically so, e. g. never can simulate a real world ecomony truly.

One area where SI should very much be inspired by CK (especially III) is face models - I'd argue to the extent, that they should simply licence the solution. Don't need the genetics, the garbs or the injuries, just the facial and hair model (which also ages rather realistically, so you can use it throughout a footballer's career and as a staff member).

Quite offtopic, but isn't 365 a subscription model, Microsoft attempting to relieve you the price of the full program each year in essence?

You can also get a MAC if you want to.

Well, judging by my precision as a researcher when evaluating players, I would not use the FM database for any real life scouting purpose if I was a professional club. I highly doubt any do.

Kinda, but with the game being kept "fresh" and access to DLCs / continuously improving features. Paradox is a good example, their Clausewitz engine games are a kind of hybrid where you can buy the basegame, but for it to be up to date with all the features you have to buy the constant stream of DLCs (about two every year, not to speak of the cosmetics). They also offer the subscription model as an alternative pointed out above. In a very abstract way, you could already consider FM a subscription-based model, the customers mainly pay for the updated DB each year. (The development cycle is certainly quicker than for other strategy franchises). I guess the main differentiator in the above examples to a true subscription-based model is the fact that you can still play the game without a monthly fee with the features already acquired - on a subscription, you would have no access to play whatsoever once you do not pay anymore.

I am all for press conferences hidden behind a DLC.

Very offtopic, but Firaxis are bringing out Civ VII on every console that is, was or going to be (like the Switch). An am befuddled how one plays a strategy game on a console. I shall continue revering our prophet and saviour Gaben.

The PC gaming master race credentials in me would say in an insulting manner: catering to dirty console peasants. It is easier for the programmers to release the product on multiple platforms. (And crucially, also develop the game on, fix bugs etc for these varying platforms at the same time) But it being more ubiquitously available and used throughout the industry, there is also quite a few 3rd-party extensions / libraries, e. g. SI can more easily licence / use a physics, face, whatever model if they so desire.

It seems there are a lot of people here who came to hate on women's football using the dev update as an excuse. I myself am actively disinterested in women's football (women's handball or water polo are however much more on equal footing when it comes to engagement compared to the men's version), but I do see a rationale of adding it, it could attract a whole new customer base which Sega / SI are after, they want to make more money after all, that is legitimate. Also something about the "diehard" fans of the franchise who spend 1000s of hours with it may be invested and demand that their dedication carries some weight, but I have a bad piece of news for them. Someone who buys the game and plays maybe half a season and never touches it again pays the same amount of money. So if they lose say a generous 5% of the customer base due to this subset being angry what direction the product has been taken, yet can attract 25 % new customers, of whom maybe 30 % will be buying the game next year again, it's an easy decision which way to go. There is however one crucial thing which all the bemoaners are partially getting at, yet given their agendas and preconceptions, seem to be able to articulate so adeptly as Miles has in his post. It's about the weight thing. I think the large portion of us can all agree it is rather inconsequential / an extremely niche detail and it should have never been mentioned. But with the mention, Miles made a very clear point: SI put in a lot of effort to every single minute detail of women's football. I personally expected a bit of the db to be extended, the contents of which will lead to inflammatory discussions about how the women are rated against the men (as it has been over at EA), and that's it. Yet evidently, there is much more to the modifications. Then you are greeted with the message immediately to contrast: we couldn't care too much about international management, so it has to be cut, soz. It may be down to Unity, but the whole update (which btw is mostly aimed at the hardcore customer segment talked about above, not the conquest ones) has the overarching message (probably not intended to be this way, but Miles ain't a communications expert, so it came out like this): we really really really cared about women's football and have little time for the game now... which will set off people who will then feel reinforced in their worldview of certain sinister forces infiltrating every aspect of their life and come here and complain about things that have little to none to do with the actual game. Moral of the story: get a comms representative SI.

TBF the civfanatics forums are in a similar state after the announcements by Firaxis, it's also quite fun to read them. But maybe take a leaf out of their book SI: they rolled out their community manager at a panel show, and ever since the forum has been less inflammatory. (I guess the showing off / explaining of the new mechanics more in detail helped, as well as the focus on the points that arose in the community)

It seems / I'd hazard this is an issue if he is on the broader NT shortlist for Cameroon, but not played for them yet. As Cameroon is more presitigous than Latvia to play for, the game logic halts every step towards eligibility for the inferior FA in such a case. Happened to me in a Luxembourg save with a Colombian winger and have seen the same on SYC's BaN save in Malta also with a South American player.

SI have never cared about cosmetics / immersion, and this bugs me greatly. I guess a bit of it is down to licencing, but a lot of seems to be just not caring. There are some issues which would need a bit more attention and some which would be a relatively easy fix. Yet, instead now you get to wear an eyepatch! /Start of rant/ Some of the decisions in this regard are also on the verge of sensibility: why prioritize a manager being able to put on a ring on every single finger which you never ever see after the character selection screen, yet have spectators at the matchday wear 6 uniform outfits in the entire crowd, something which you look at about 30-50 % of your time in the game? Why the devolution of player faces compared to '18 (they had maybe less detail but were not in the middle of uncanny valley). Why does the community need to plug the gaps with facepacks like Z's. You can't licence the face of a non-existing person. The stadium models used to be better and more varied, there was a dowgrade there as well. (For instance no more athletic track), the less said about stadium environs, the better. Stadiums in lower leagues with 4 full stands generated where their capacity is 500-1000. All of them chock full of people on matchday. Scraping club colours out of the UI due to legibility / ui issues instead of looking into how to integrate them in a legible way - or have a bit of logic in selecting colours that does not allow low-contrast combinations. (Example: instead of using yellow for Barcelona text, using a slightly darker blue and a slightly brighter red) Kit / shorts / socks designs never reviewed as there are options in there which get picked 0.15 % of all kits (why are they still in and not international football?) Kit colour clash detection is comically bad, and it would not be a difficult thing to fix. (I recently played in red vs Villareal in yellow. Game deemed my green GK clashing for some unfathomable reason and generated an orange one...) /end of rant/

I used Midjourney

I had similar issues, for me it was a custom skin, more specificly windows on the bottom bar with the formations. Makes the match view lag for some reason. When switched off, everythingnwent fine.

This comment has aged like fine wine. 🍷

To be fair, whilst Zealand's pack is miles better than what is in the game, it could be enhanced further, best by an official solution by SI. 1): matching hair colour to the 3D models / db data as well as facial hair 2) better ethnicity types: East Africans and Polynesians / Pacific Islanders (and some South Africans) do not look like West Africans. Yet they all get West African faces. Same with Central Asians getting Asian faces and Asians, SE Asians in general need deblobbing for a proper solution, as Japanese, Koreans, Chinese (even within the country) have different appearance. Also mixed-race images are complicated and the middle Eastern / North African types are definitely off (for instance for Cyprus, Israel or Turkey) 3) With a bit more effort, you could have ageing faces. So generate images with the same prompt (and seed) with the descriptor for example 15-18-21-25-30-35-45-55-65 old for proper looks throughout the playing and staff career of a regen. Here an exeamle with 15-20-25-35

The attributes will be updated, no worry, that is done by the researchers as a hobby.

TBF many men are quite conscious of their height (going as far as giving false information on dating apps as not to be immediately discarded as an option by the opposite sex - so a friend told me) - so why display that?